Manchester Guitar Tech
Ozzy Lister – guitar and bass repair
Butterscotch Telecaster with Joe Barden pickups
I put this guitar together today for a customer. The body is from guitarbuild.co.uk and the owner finished it using my Butterscotch nitrocellulose lacquer.
I fitted the Joe Barden pickups, with the bridge mounted to the body, G E Smith style. There is a 4-way switch fitted, giving in-series as well as in-parallel pickup combinations, adding an extra dimension to the sound. The Joe Barden pickups sound huge.
The pickguard is one I made from Garolite sheet, lacquered in clear nitrocellulose of course!
Skiffle Cat Jazz Guitar
I spent just about all of today rewiring this jazz-style guitar. It was made by Skiffle Cat who may well now be defunct? It’s not the greatest guitar in the world but it is very servicable and now sounds the business.
Last time it was here I dressed the frets, gave it a new Tusq nut and set it up but today was the turn of the electrics to be improved.
The owner bought a set of The Creamery’s “Swing-O” pickups to be fitted and some ideas about a wiring scheme. We decided on individual volume controls for each pickup, plus master volume control, together with treble and bass controls and a 3-way rotary switch with chicken head knob for pickup selection.
Getting the circuit right took some time, both to design and install. I based the tone stack design on G&L’s PTB system, explained here at Planet-Z but changed the component values so that it worked well with the Creamery pickups.
Everything was wired with single core screened cables so the result should be resistant to external interference.
The controls have proved to be extremely versatile and the bass control in particular is great for thinning out the sound of a jazz box.
Sunburst EJ-200
Another EJ-200 lefty conversion, this one in sunburst.
These really are cracking acoustic guitars with bags of tone and volume.
This example (sourced from Thomann) has much better neck angle than most so I was able to get a low action with plenty of height left on the saddle.
I’m thinking that I really should figure out a way to recreate the pickguard design – CNC milling maybe?